by Justin Bell
***
Angel Menendez pressed his shoulder to the wall, glancing out the window of the cafeteria, out towards the front gate. He scanned the whole perimeter of the front wall back and forth, then looked over his shoulder.
“Franky, where did Schultz go? Did you see? He went out to check something.”
Franky took a step forward, his shotgun resting on his left shoulder as he pushed past Angel, bending to look out the window.
“I don’t see him,” he said. “What did he think he saw?”
“No idea. He was grumbling about something, then I saw him walking across the grass towards the front gate.”
“Coops!” Franky yelled and Reggie Cooper drifted away from the far side of the cafeteria and headed back their way. “You see anything weird outside when you and Levry were just out there?”
Coops shook his head. “Nope. Not really. I mean, we heard a twig or branch break or something, but we figure it was just an animal. Never actually saw nothing.”
Franky nodded. “All right.”
Angel glanced back out the window again, leaning over towards the sill. His eyes widened. For the briefest moment, he saw them. Two slender shapes tumbling down from one of the brick columns, landing clumsily, then picking themselves up and dashing across the grass. He saw them clear as day.
Two girls. Well, one woman and one girl. What were they doing here? His mouth opened to speak, but as his eyes narrowed on their retreating forms, he pressed his lips back together again. What would Franky do if he found them out there? Or Coops? Or Levry? He shuddered to think what Levry would do to either one of them, especially the young one. No, maybe he’d just keep his mouth shut—
“Yo, Franky! We got some runners!”
Angel snapped his head up at the yelling voice.
Horace Yarda waved to Franky from the opposite side of the cafeteria, a wide and empty room cleared of furniture, all the tables and chairs stacked up along the outside wall.
“Whatcha got, Yard dawg?” Franky asked walking towards him.
“Two chicas! Running across the grass. Towards the maintenance shed!”
“What?” Franky broke into a run, dashing across the cafeteria towards the far exit. “Don’t be pulling anything on me!”
“No way, hermano! Look!” Yarda stepped away from the window and Franky made his way there, looking out onto the grass. He could see them there, walking close to the concrete wall, no longer running now, but now slinking along, trying to remain invisible.
“Well, lookee here,” Franky mumbled. He turned towards the rest of the men in the cafeteria. Ten of them in all. “C’mon, boys. We got us a couple of intruders. I think we need to go show them what we do to intruders, huh?”
Around the empty cafeteria the crew of men in gray jumpsuits yelled and laughed, and deep inside, Angel’s blood ran ice cold.
***
“Right there, up ahead,” whispered Max as he and Brad led the charge, clinging to the tall wall bordering the lawn. The large, red building loomed before them, its flat, wood siding a stark contrast to the more natural organic twisting of the surrounding trees. Max reached it first, flattening against the wood surface with Brad close behind him, Phil and Clancy taking up the rear. Clancy had his Glock clutched in his right hand though Phil’s pistol remained wedged into the back of his pants.
“Door’s up here,” Max whispered. “It was locked.”
Greer’s eyes scanned the empty lawn as he moved past Phil and the two boys, then reached the door. He nudged it with his shoulder.
“I can break in pretty easily,” he said.
“Hold up,” Brad replied, tapping Max. “Boost me up like you did before. Window.”
Max looked up. “That window’s pretty small, bro.”
“Hey, I’m skinny.”
Phil looked over towards the main building with the cafeteria. “Whatever we’re doing, let’s be quick, I feel a little exposed out here.”
Max bent low, cupping his hands, and Brad stepped into them. Max hefted him up, Brad’s fingers working along the edge of the small window sill. He shoved up and eased the glass open, then lifted, squirming up into the hole. Greer crouched low, listening, and could hear the soft thump of him landing on the other side, then the slip of metal on metal as the deadbolt worked free and the door eased open.
“Nice job, kid!” Greer said, running a hand through Brad’s short hair. He beamed as if he’d just scored an ‘A’ on a math test.
Phil turned towards them as they entered. “Okay. Since you guys are so smart, we need to split up.”
“What do you mean?” Brad asked.
“We need food. Supplies. Anything you can get. Is there a place you can grab some of that stuff?”
“Cold storage is the next building over,” Max replied, a little too quickly he realized. He’d spent more time than he cared to admit in cold storage grabbing the stuff the other kids had wanted him to grab.
“Can you get in there?” Phil asked. Brad and Max shot each other a look.
“Yeah. Shouldn’t be a problem,” Max replied.
“Good. Head out that way, meet us back here in ten minutes. We’ll load up that trailer,” he said, pointing to a large, metal box trailer that sat out in the open space inside the large maintenance garage.
“Seems like a lot of stuff to try to get done before the jokers in the jumpsuits see us,” Greer whispered.
“We can do it,” Brad replied, eager to make the older man proud again.
Greer shrugged. “All right. But ten minutes. Any later and we’re tempting fate big time.”
Max nodded, slapped Brad on the back, then the two of them withdrew from the door, curled around the corner of the shed, and darted towards the wide storage building ahead.
“You okay with this?” Max asked Brad as they jogged across the grass.
“Yeah. Sure. Just don’t tell my mom and dad when we find them,” he said, sounding like he was mostly joking, but Max couldn’t be sure.
“Around the corner,” Max said, pointing towards the front right edge of the building. “There’s a window in back.”
Moments later, they were slipping through the unlocked window into the vast, shelf-crammed cold storage facility, their feet landing on the concrete floor. The air was brisk and cool inside. Even though power had been out for a long time, the cold air had remained at least somewhat contained inside the insulated building.
It looked like a warehouse inside; concrete floors and unremarkable walls with tall metal shelves creating six aisles from left to right, divided into different sections.
“So, you don’t talk much about your parents,” Max said as he led the way towards the front aisle where the canned goods and non-perishables were. Scooping a box from a stack on the corner, he began lifting cans from the shelves and placing them inside.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Sore subject?”
“Nah, mom and dad are cool. They try their best.”
Max stood, pulling more cans off and dumping them in the box. “So how’d you end up at Vernon?” he asked. “You’ve never said.”
“Is this really the best time to be asking about my family?” Brad motioned to their surroundings. “In the middle of an apocalypse?”
Max shrugged. “Why not? We never talked about it much before.”
Brad sighed. “Long story,” he said, repeating Max’s motions. “Mom was a lawyer. Dad ran a food truck near the University of Colorado campus. That way he could pick me up from school and take care of me while mom worked her cases.”
Max moved down a few feet and grabbed some boxes of cereal, pulling those out and putting them in the box.
“So? Why Vernon?”
Brad closed his eyes for a moment, pinching his lips closed as he reached for a brownie mix.
“My older brother, Grayson.”
Max stopped, turning towards his friend. “You never mentioned a brother.”
“Yeah. He…uhh…he died.”
“Oh, man,” Max whispered. “Sorry, Brad.”
Brad shrugged as he stepped over and pulled some soup from the shelf and stacked the cans in the box. The box was getting dangerously full, so Brad made his way back to the end of the aisle and retrieved another.
“It’s all right. He wasn’t at the house much. Quite a bit older than I was.”
“So what happened?”
“He got in with a bad crowd in high school. Dropped out and was living with friends for a while. Got mixed up in drugs and stuff.”
Max shook his head.
“Got killed in a shoot-out when I was nine. Almost cost mom her law license. They got so petrified of what happened to Gray that they sent me out to Vernon to try to keep me away from the bad elements of the city.”
Max felt a lurch in his stomach, a phantom punch in the proverbial gut. “Instead you got wrapped up with me.”
Brad shot him a look, bringing the empty box back over. “That’s not how it is,” he said.
“Well, it kind of is,” Max replied, feeling guilty. “If you’d been caught tagging along with some of that stuff I was doing...”
“But I didn’t get caught. And I won’t. I can’t. Mom and dad would have an aneurysm.”
“I think they’d understand what we’re doing here,” Max said, stacking a few more boxes of food into the empty cardboard container.
“You might be surprised,” Brad replied. In truth, his parents had little understanding for crossing that legal line, even by a single step. Had the potential end of civilization changed that mentality? Brad thought it did, especially when it came to his survival, but in truth, he didn’t know for sure.
The echoing slam snapped him back to reality.
“What was that?” he asked, his eyes darting.
Max already had his back pressed against the shelf. “Front door,” he whispered. “Someone just came in.”
“Your dad?”
“Not if the door was locked. He wouldn’t have a key.”
Footsteps slapped the concrete floor, one right after the other, the steady plod of an approaching person. An adult by the sounds of the steps.
“Go!” Max hissed, pointing towards the opposite end of the shelf.
“What about the boxes?” Brad asked.
“No time!”
Brad darted towards the other end of the aisle, looking back towards Max, who, to his shock, was just standing there.
“Max!” Brad barked in a hoarse, low voice. Max waved him around the side of the aisle, telling him to go around. Brad stood there frozen. A square of light from one of the windows drifted across the wall in front of Max and he could see the bobbing shadow of an approaching figure. A slow, methodical approach. Brad waved his hands, trying to get Max to see, but Max didn’t move, he just remained pressed to the shelf, muscles tensed and firm, though Brad wasn’t sure if he was too afraid to run, or preparing himself to do something stupid.
If he knew Max, and he felt like at this point he did, he was likely getting ready to do something stupid.
***
Rhonda’s eyes scanned the grass ahead of them. To their left, she could see the wide brick building housing the cafeteria, and far ahead and to their right she saw the four-door maintenance shed looming tall and wide, pressed tight against the row of trees flanking the perimeter wall. Scattered trees put together a makeshift forest of sorts in the middle of the grass clearing, and just to the right of the cafeteria, almost straight ahead of them, was a large one-story building which looked like some kind of storage facility.
She realized then she had no idea which buildings her family and Brad were in, and that if she wanted to venture out there towards them, she and her daughter would be out in the open. Maybe they should have waited until nightfall.
Well, except for the whole nuclear radiation and contamination drifting from Utah. That kind of put a rush on things.
“Winnie, take it slow,” Rhonda whispered as her daughter moved further ahead, slinking along the concrete wall towards the maintenance shed. “We don’t want to be too far out into the open if they spot us.”
She touched the spot on her cheek where the prisoner had struck her and ran fingers down over her swollen lips. He’d gotten her pretty good, and now with her face and her leg both hurting, she felt like she’d been through the ringer.
Rhonda was so absorbed in her facial injuries that she only barely heard the echoing slam of the back door of the cafeteria.
“Mom!” Winnie’s shout broke her out of her trance and she swiveled to face her. “They saw us!” Winnie pointed out towards the brick building and Rhonda followed the direction of her finger. Three men in gray jump suits had already spilled out of the building, all of them holding pistols.
“Oh, no,” Rhonda whispered. She spun towards Winnie. “Run! Get to the shed! That’s the best cover!”
“Mom, come on!” Winnie shouted, bolting towards the shed.
Rhonda spun, peeling the pistol from the belt at the small of her back and bringing it around, firing at the men charging from the building. They scattered away, a few of them drawing their own weapons and firing back.
The trees between Rhonda and the prisoners deflected the first few shots as she darted right and ran towards the shed, reaching back and firing behind her.
“Who is this crazy woman?” Franky screamed, clutching his weapon in two hands and firing back at her as she dashed towards the shed. Winnie pounded on a small door on the side of the structure.
Rhonda stumbled towards her, slamming herself against the wall as a stray bullet punched into the corner of the wood structure, throwing splinters.
The door eased open and Phil leaned out, his eyes wide and roaming.
“What’s going on out here? Get in, get in!”
Rhonda and Winnie charged into the shed, slamming the door behind them.
Inside the structure was a wide open area with tall, angled ceilings, four separate stalls and a dozen rolling metal tool carts complimenting lines of shelves pressed up against the walls. Two of the stalls contained two Bobcat construction vehicles with each of the other two stalls filled with two Honda four-wheeled All-Terrain Vehicles. Against the far wall a square, metal trailer stood, and the door was open with Clancy Greer huddled there, moving stuff into it.
“You open a hornet’s nest out there, ladies?” he asked, his voice echoing in the cavernous building.
“I guess so,” Rhonda replied. Then something seemed to occur to her. “Wait. Where are Max and Brad?”
Phil looked up. “They went to get food and supplies. They’re in the storage building at the far side of the yard.”
“What are we going to do?” Rhonda asked. “There has to be at least ten of them out there, and I’m sure they’re heading straight here.”
“How much fuel you have loaded?” Phil asked Greer.
“About fifty gallons worth of these five gallon tanks. Not a lot, but it might have to do.”
“Batteries?”
“Grabbed a bunch.”
Phil turned back towards Rhonda and Winnie. “We’ve got four ATVs and four of us. If we move quick and grab the boys from the storage building, we might be able to make a break for it.”
“Against ten convicts with firearms?” Rhonda asked.
“We’ve been in hairier spots,” Phil said. And as scary as it was, Rhonda couldn’t help but agree.
“We can open this fourth door,” Greer said, pointing towards the wide garage door ahead of him. “All the four wheelers should be able to squirt through there and make a beeline towards the storage building.”
“I can provide as much cover fire as possible,” Rhonda said.
“Nah,” Greer replied. “You take the four-wheeler, I’ll provide the cover.”
“Clancy, you were stabbed in the gut less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“You were shot in the leg.”
Phil’s eyes narrowed for a moment and he took a step closer to her. “Hey, what happened
to your face?”
“Later,” she said, patting his shoulder. “All right, Clancy, you win. You give cover fire, we’ll bolt for the storage building and hope these guys are all lousy shots.”
A rapid slamming thud came from the door just next to Rhonda.
“Hey! We know you’re in there!”
Phil pushed one of the ATVs towards the fourth garage door, then pulled back and helped Greer move the metal trailer over and clamp it down on the trailer hitch. It took a few tries, and Phil wasn’t an expert at this sort of thing, but they managed to get it attached and ready to go.
A whining motor rumbled from the ceiling and the fourth garage door began to crawl upwards. On the other side of the door, one final loud crash blew the door open, throwing Rhonda backwards, causing her to stumble onto the concrete floor.
“Look out!” she shouted as two of the prisoners charged into the shed, weapons drawn. Winnie scrambled backwards, ducking into one of the stalls and tucking herself close to the wooden wall. Rhonda brought her weapon up and fired, not coming anywhere near the two prisoners, but blasting enough noise to send them scurrying back on the other side of the door. The world around her seemed thin and brittle, the escalating violence brewing just beneath a fragile shell. As gunfire exploded around them, she could feel the cracks starting to form and feel the ground itself beneath her giving way to chaos.
***
The man stepped closer to the end of the aisle and Max drew in his breath and held it. He wasn’t sure what his plan had been or what he was prepared to do, he just knew he wanted to help Brad get out of the situation. Brad’s revelation about his parents had hit Max hard, and the guilt of getting his best friend in trouble with his family weighed on him more than he ever thought it might.
Out in the yard he heard the faint cracks of guns firing, and his heart skipped.
“No,” he whispered, fearing the worst.
“What the—?” Max heard the man growl in a thick accent. Suddenly the man charged forward, preparing to turn down the aisle to assist his comrades. Max had to act fast. He coiled his legs and charged forward as fast and hard as he could, barreling into the slender man as he rounded the corner, hitting him high in the chest and sending him stumbling backwards, his arms pinwheeling. A pistol flung from his outstretched fingers as his heel clipped one of the boxes on the floor and he fell, his back slamming hard against concrete.
